The Last September: A Novel

“Oh,” he said. Startled. “Brett.”


For a moment, I felt like I’d intruded on something. Maybe I was wrong. From the way he looked ahead, still focused on the crowd, he really could have been waiting for someone else to emerge from the building. He had a pen in his hand, and he wrote something on his pants leg. I squinted, trying to read the tiny handwriting, and Eli put his left hand over it, hiding it from me.

We sat there for a moment, then I fished in my bag for sunglasses. I slid them onto the bridge of my nose, and once I was properly shielded I said, “What are you doing here?” I tried to make the question sound gentle. Along with the pounds, Eli seemed to have shed years. Except for him writing on his clothes, it felt almost normal sitting next to him, as if I had walked out of Bartlett Hall and into a geographical time warp, and now sat outside Hellems in Boulder, Colorado—which would explain the sunlight, way too bright for Massachusetts even in late summer.

“What am I doing here?” Eli said. He turned and looked at me, and I remembered his eyes from that night on the rooftop. It took considerable effort not to bring my fingertips to my forehead.

“Yes,” I said. “Were you waiting for me?”

Something in his face softened. He reached out and closed his hand around mine. His grip felt gentle, and his fingertips chapped. Eli looked so sad. I took my other hand and placed it on top of the two of ours, and we sat there a while, me comforting him for a problem that hadn’t yet been identified.

“I tried to go back to college,” he finally said.

“You did?”

“Yeah. Tried a semester at Manhattanville after I got out of the hospital. But those fucking drugs they put you on, nobody can concentrate. You know how they used to lobotomize mental patients surgically? Now they do it with pharmaceuticals.”

“Oh,” I said, without thinking, almost laughing. “It can’t be that bad.”

“You want to try my Clozaril?” He turned his head toward me sharply, with such an air of rebuke that I drew my hands back.

“No,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“And then community college. Remember how I was going to go to Harvard Med? How that was the plan? And I end up dissecting kitty cats at Westchester Community College. Not that I could handle that, even. Dropped out after six damn weeks.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But maybe you could still go back? Ladd did. People do all the time.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Eli said. “Once these drugs are out of my system, that’s what I’ll do.” He spoke a little too loudly, a few people walking by turned their heads. He didn’t notice, the decibels rising when he said, “Look. My mother’s dying. I want you to come see her.”

“Me?” I said. Then I absorbed the first part of his sentence. “Eli,” I said. “I’m so sorry. Are you sure?” I remembered seeing her just a few months ago. She’d looked fine.

“Am I sure? Is the fucking hospice turning our house into a death scene? Does she weigh like fifty-eight pounds?”

“I’m really sorry,” I said again. It must have come on very fast. “That’s terrible.”

“Terrible,” he echoed. “Terrible, terrible, terrible.”

“But Eli, she doesn’t know me. Why would she want me there?”

“I want you there,” Eli said. “It’s what I need. What I want. I can’t explain everything.”

The words came out too fast, too loud, running into each other. I felt a little afraid of him. Also afraid that if I went, Ladd would be furious.

“Is Charlie there?”

“His mother’s dying. Where else would he be?”

I glanced down at Eli’s hand, still covering whatever he’d written, more indecipherable words surrounding it.

“Please,” Eli said. Sorrow strangled the word. “Please Brett.”

I remembered that Colorado night, Eli carried away on a stretcher. Do you want to ride with him? And what had I done, that time, but nothing? So rare that life presents an opportunity, another chance, to do something better.